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She said it depends on one’s definition of a leader.
“I think it’s never about me, and it should never be about who is the leader,” Yousafzai said. “To me, it is about the common cause that we all fight for.”
Yousafzai, 28, is a world-renowned activist from Pakistan who is a champion for girls’ education. She visited the University of Colorado Boulder’s Macky Auditorium on Thursday to deliver the closing keynote for the Conference on World Affairs to a sold-out crowd.
At 11 years old, she started speaking out against the Taliban and in favor of girls’ education, as the Taliban started prohibiting girls from going to school.
“I was only 11 years old, but I knew what my life would be like without an education,” Yousafzai said.
She knew because she’d seen it in her relatives and friends. It meant being forced into marriage young, having children young and having no sense of autonomy.
“I knew that I had to do something,” she said. “We couldn’t just stay silent and do nothing.”
Yousafzai started speaking out publicly on girls’ right to learn and blogging about her experiences for BBC Urdu. She survived an assassination attempt when she was 15 years old, when the Taliban shot her in the head while she was on a school bus. Her voice reached a global audience, and at 17 years old, she became the youngest person to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize. She’s the author of two memoirs, “I Am Malala” and “Finding My Way.” She also founded the Malala Fund, which aims to provide access to education to all girls worldwide.
CU Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz described her as “one of the defining moral leaders of our time.” He prompted the audience to think about what they were doing and thinking about when they were 11 years old — the age Yousafzai was when she started her activism.
“Tonight’s speaker was witnessing her basic right to an education being stripped away and decided she wouldn’t accept that,” Schwartz said.
Yousafzai also enjoys playing and watching sports, especially women’s sports. She was in attendance during the Denver Summit’s first-ever home game, which shattered the U.S. attendance record for a women’s professional sporting event on March 28 at Empower Field, drawing 63,004 fans. She hopes more doors can continue to open for girls in sports.
“When girls see it, they know they can do it as well,” Yousafzai said. “These girls in sports are an inspiration to not only the younger generations but the older ones as well.”
Young people make good activists, Yousafzai said, because they tend to have a good intuition about injustice. She advised people to trust those instincts, to believe in the power of change and in the power of organizing collectively.
“I do believe (in) the power of young people in the space of activism, and I do encourage young people to become activists,” she said.
She wants people around the world to trust the leadership of girls everywhere, so that her story is not unique. Yousafzai acknowledged it takes a long time, months and years, to push for one policy or law change to benefit girls. She urged people to keep supporting women in all spaces, and to keep dreaming big so the world can be a better, fairer place for everyone.
“Yes, it’s overwhelming, and it takes a lot of time. When I think about global change for girls, we have to stay committed to it, we have to stay together, and it’s not the job of one person,” she said. “… It’s also about not losing sight of the dream that you have.”
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